Collaborative Research: High-Resolution Underway Air-Sea Observations in Drake Passage for Climate Science

University Of California-San Diego Scripps Inst Of Oceanography, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The Drake Passage is the body of water between South America and the Western Antarctic Peninsula, thus connecting the Southern Atlantic and Southern Pacific Oceans through the unimpeded flow of the immense Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). Using the relatively frequent ferry crossings of the Drake Passage by the RV/AS LMGould, the USAP supply ship, this proposal will continue the of collection of upper ocean XBT temperature and XTCD salinity data in this natural chokepoint for the ACC. This will yield additional hydrographic observations on seasonal to interannual timescales, and on spatial scales ranging from the current core to mesoscale eddies. These high-resolution, multi-repeat transects (up to 6 ~7 crossings per year) are quality controlled, archived and made available to the broader community in order to facilitate study of the modes of variability of the dominant oceanic current on the planet (the ACC). The Drake Passage XBT/XCTD transect time series now extends back to 1996, and continues to add to a number of quantitative estimates of the long term trends in Southern Ocean fronts, surface water mass properties, their response to atmospheric forcing on climate relevant time scales. This proposal also seeks renewal of a near decadal time series effort measuring the underway surface partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) in regular transects across the Drake Passage.